“Medical Office Employee Training—Every
Doctor’s Achilles Heel”

Fail at this and you’re revenue drops
significantly.

I’ll never forget the problems I had
in the 1970’s with my own medical
staff when I believed that hiring
office staff people who had already
worked in other medical offices was
key to my office efficiency,
productivity,
and growth.

It seemed smart. It was logical.
But, as we mature in our medical
office practice business we all find
that sometimes the smart and logical
things
we do are not the right things
for the business of medical practice.

When one of the employees didn’t show
up for work, the office slowed down
considerably, some other employee
wound up doing two jobs, patients had
to wait longer to be seen, and
confusion reigned. The incredible part
of this was that I had no reason not
to think that this is what I had to
learn to live with in my solo
practice.

It happened in all my associates
offices as well, but knowing that
never relieved my frustration and
stress caused by the situation.
Having no medical office management
training myself, no money to pay a
trained medical office manager to do
it for me, I did the best I could
under the circumstances. You can
eliminate that problem in your old or
new medical practice.

If I had had at least some small
business management education during
my training, which even today medical
schools refuse to teach or even offer
to students, I would have had a much
higher probability for a much more
income producing practice.

Inevitably, physicians and other
health care providers in business
either have to take the time to learn
business, business management, on
their own, or live with a mediocre,
stagnant medical practice for years to
come. If you don’t believe it, I
suggest you speak with older doctors
in private medical practice who can
give you a profound jolt of reality.

Maybe you think it’s OK to let your
office staff learning and education
become an employee to employee
training program without your
participation? You certainly can’t run
a medical practice by yourself. You
hire office staff, which is a good
indication that you understand the
perils of doing everything on your own
and why they have importance to your
medical practice.

Logic says, if a medical staff is
important to your professional
practice, wouldn’t you prefer to have
an office staff that is highly
efficient and loyal to your goals for
the practice? How are employees going
to find out what you want done
and how you want things done in
your office?

Is your new
employee training
process the consequence of being
taught by older employees who you
never trained in the first place.
That’s what goes on in over 90% of
medical offices. It’s also a good
part of the reason why business expert
Michael Gerber, THE E-MYTH: PHYSICIAN,
considers that over 90% of medical
practices are “mediocre.” I’d wager
that you never considered your
practice
to be mediocre.

Even in the case of old employees, you
probably have no clear idea what you
expect of them. They adapt to the
lack of “correction” or “chastising”
as approval of whatever they
do. You certainly can “get by” with
that compromising attitude about your
office staff, but it doesn’t allow the
lifestyle you once expected from your
education.

For those who know and then ignore
these landmines, it’s a clear and profound indication that they never
expected much out of their
career anyway.

For those doctors who continue to be
driven towards improving and growing
their practices, there are great
rewards coming.

Even you, know that the usual worker
today does only as much as is demanded
of them and nothing else. If they
aren’t continually nudged, they drift
even lower in their work efforts.

This gives every employee, hopefully
only a few, the opportunity to cheat
on hours working, manipulating other
members of the office staff to help
do
their work for them, and offer
absolutely no creative or innovative
ideas for improving
the practice.

This description matches what Dan
Kennedy, expert in marketing
strategies and business, says about an
employee, “The only purpose for an
employee is to make a business
profitable.” If they don’t
contribute, they gotta go.

This behavior of any office staff
members can be altered by giving
the proper attention to the teaching
and training of medical
office personnel.

One of the world’s greatest public
speakers, Nido R. Qubein, points out
in his book, “HOW TO BE A GREAT
COMMUNICATOR”, that in today’s
workforce an employee can only be
trained to do mechanical
things, but stops there. An
organization’s success depends on the
best coordination up and down the
management levels, to the last
employee.

It is not achieved without
effective communication to, “unify the
people toward a common vision, a
common mission, and common goals.”

The idea in the past has been to spend
way too much time to teach employees
what to do. We should be
thinking more about what the medical
staff thinks, how they feel, and how
they behave. Spending too much time
getting a job done, instead of
producing excellent results is the
weak point. Workers spend too much
time conforming than to creating. You don’t
train, you educate.

Successful businesses are composed of
employees educated in
non-mechanical skills, like goal
setting, problem solving, decision
making, conflict management, among
others. Those are the goals every
doctor should teach their medical
office staff members in order to get
the most productivity out of them.
I’ll be creating a manual soon of how
to do it.

What does this all mean to doctors who
manage a medical office?

Medical office staff
education
is more important than training
for two reasons...

1.

Robert B. Cialdini, PhD,
has shown
that influencing people’s behavior and
reactions to a job or request is
dramatically improved when one gives a
“because” reason behind their
request. “INFLUENCE: THE PSYCHOLOGY
OF PERSUASION,” contains many examples
of studies where he demonstrates
this
behavior.

Taking this to the medical office
indicates that when the doctor or
office manager tells an employee to do
something, the employee is far more
likely to perform the job that's
assigned better if they know and
understand the reason for doing it.
You educate your employees. Make the
time to do it yourself, or hire it
done.

2.

When a doctor is open with his or
her objectives, mission, and practice
goals with the medical office staff,
it allows for the employee to mentally
move their mindset from a job
completion effort only, to that of
a mindset where creativity,
inspiration, and desire to become
an insider on the
staff is inspired.

Factors that bring the
best out of your medical office staff...

1. You must believe that education of
your office staff improves your office productivity and income. If you
don’t, then you need more education
about business.

2. You must commit the time and effort
on a regular basis to educate, inform,
and communicate with all your office
staff. (ex. 1 hour each week at a
specified time)

3. When your staff sees you making
these efforts yourself, they become
more compliant with a desire to help
improve the office business—advantages
to
them as well.

Imagine for a minute that you’re one
of those physicians who has no
interest in... good grief... educating your
office staff. Why would a staffer go
out of their way to suggest creative
ideas for seeing more patients, or
regaining ones that have left your
practice, or better methods to handle
the 90-day accounts?

Your staff only sees that you are out
of the office most of the time, you
scarcely ever speak to them in any
personal or complimentary way, and you
keep all your personal feelings and
beliefs a secret from them. You must
be a true introvert, which hamstrings
you for life.

Imagine how frustrating it is for a
member of your office staff to offer
their help, even when it’s not in
their job description, on a project
you have
going and then never hear a
thank you for it. If you believe that
these
things are
all taken for
granted, you probably are divorced or
near it.

Nothing should be taken for granted.
Your mouth must be educated to say
what should be said at the time it
should be said—not the next day. Not
only that, your mouth must be trained
to repeatedly speak those same
complimentary phrases over and over on
a regular basis no matter how silly or
ridiculous it may seem to you to have
to do so.

How to move your office staff from
wild turkeys running through the
forest of patients and paperwork to
their full potential of genius and
creativeness that continues to ooze
out through their skin and are unable
to control it? Then you can educate
them because they are ready to
learn and implement.

You know the process. You just
haven’t had time to think about it,
especially with all the alligators in
the pond.

Here's how to create employee inspiration...

1.

First, you have to
demonstrate your desire to work hard
to improve and grow your practice,
instead of gabbing for hours with the
other doctors in the doctor’s lounge
at the hospital...
something obvious to
them whether you believe that or not.

2.

Second, make yourself a
social networker inside your office.
It proves to your office staff that
you are congenial, friendly, open to
discussions, like to hear other
opinions, and are interested in how
they feel and what they want or need.
This is easily done by informing them
of your thoughts, ideas, and plans
about what you intend to do with your
practice, emphasizing goals and
strategies that you hope they can
contribute to.

3.

Third, be persistent,
consistent, and verbal on frequent
repeated occasions about where you are
headed with your practice. The
message is that what you said prior
continues to be the focus of the
practice and wasn’t just a flash in
the dark. They understand you are
serious, and they should be too... or
leave.

4.

Fourth,
convince
the
staff
that you
need all
their
help,
which
lets
them
know
they are
part of
the
enterprise,
company,
or
practice... not
just a temporary unimportant person
outside the inner circle.
It
establishes loyalty, respect, and
reassurance
for their value.

5.

Fifth, time to weed out the
non-performers so that they don’t
poison the rest of the
office staff.

6.

Sixth, be very clear about
your expectations for each staff
member. This process alerts each
member of the office staff that those
expectations can only be met if they
are educated enough to meet those
expectations.
By this time the staff
is prepared to learn what you will
teach them because they want to be
part of the great adventure you have
in store for them. They see
themselves as important, productive,
creative, and self-esteem abundant.

7.

Seventh, establish a
schedule for the education sessions
and
how you want them to be
conducted. Determine the topics for
each session before beginning the
sessions so they know what to expect.
Remember, that each staffer has their
own talents
and skills.
Each will
need private education sessions to
take full advantage of their skills.
Every session whether done in a group
or separately must be instructed on
how each bit of knowledge fits into
the whole picture you have in mind for
the practice.

8.

Eighth, determine who will
teach the class sessions. For the
best outcome, you should be the
teacher and instructor. The
impossibility of having anyone else
teach what you want to be taught in
the way you want it to come across to
your staff, requires you to teach
them. You can hire it done because
there are specialists who do this kind
of teaching. However, they still
can’t compare to what you can teach
them because your practice and
functionality is unique
to you only.

9.

Ninth, after the education
process is done, you must follow-up
diligently to insure all that has been
constructed or created is persistently
kept up and expanded. There’s no end
to the growth and expansion of the
practice. The whole process becomes a
routine habit pattern
for your staff.

10.

Tenth, when the progress
you see happening because of this
effort, try not to brag. You now have
a well-oiled money machine that will
work on automatic even when
you’re not present. You can be proud
of the fact that you are the one
out of 100,000 doctors
who has
reached your full potential for your
office business.

It goes without saying that you will
need to study business and marketing
in
an ongoing
fashion to
keep up
with what
is working
in
business
at the
time. My
suggestion
is to
subscribe
to many
online
business
and
marketing
newsletters.

Contact me for the information
about the best newsletters and for my
recommendations (presently the best is
www.newsletterpro.com
). If you would like to
read about what factors determine how
successful your medical practice could
be, I suggest you read
my
eBook on the topic.

Comment
about the
"time
expense" of
doing
business
efficiently...

For you or any healthcare provider
with a practice, to have a highly
productive and proficient office staff
that have an educated view of your
medical office business means, expect
conflicts with your time, patient
services, and family sometimes. It’s
the price you have to pay for reaching
your maximum potential as a physician
and maximum potential for your
medical
practice.

It occurs to me that you have already
become used to sacrifices and
conflicts during your college and
medical education, so it’s not
something
new to you. The surprise
here is that you thought that you
could slack
off after
graduation and
the Board Exams and still hit your
peak. Never happen!

Article #25A

My Views On Medical Matters

October
2011--
"Doctor's
Terror Of
Office Management
Duties"

It
seems to
me...

After reading a recent
article about business
management and the
difficulties
that
business
administrators have in
doing their jobs, I
immediately could
visualize
the close
connection to why most
physicians not only
have difficulty with
the administration of
their own medical
practice business, but
also why all
professional medical
providers are victims
of their own
attributes.

It's well
recognized and
accepted that entrepreneurs make
lousy managers and
administrators.
Medical doctors
are, by definition,
entrepreneurs. It
would be difficult to
argue against that
premise because
doctors function in
the same environment,
or world, as all
entrepreneurs.

Almost
every patient comes to
the physician with a
symptom, or complaint,
or medical problem
that may not present
an easily recognizable
pattern of a disease
or diagnosis. So,
here in the first
minute of speaking
with his patient,
doctors find
themselves outside
their comfort zone and
involved
in mental
creativity.

The doctor can
then open their mind
to all kinds of
possibilities for
diagnosing the problem
as well as possible
treatments, all of
which are subliminally
squeezed out of the
memory banks by the
subconscious mind.
From there, the search
becomes more focused,
and the possibilities
are narrowed down.

The whole
pile of information and findings are funneled
down to the most obvious cause which usually has
a most common treatment. If that's not the case,
the doctor ends up in
entrepreneur heaven
with bundles of ideas
and a great
opportunity to solve
the problem anyway,
and show the world
what they're made
of... perhaps even the
elite medical school
they graduated from.

Getting back to
those attributes I
mentioned above. Several are those that
are a real pain in the
ass for those doctors
in private practice
who avoid taking full
control
of their
office business. They avoid
the responsibility for
management of their
medical business, and
avoid attempting to
learn and implement
time proven business
principles every
physician must have
for maximizing their
own potential in
practice.

The
highest potential for
their business income
and efficiency results from the
process. For
doctors
in this
hypnotic state of
avoidance, the
inevitable
consequences always
show up, often when
it's too
late to do
much about their
circumstances.

The crime is that it should never happen to any
physician because it
is
entirely
preventable.

A
physician's
greatest distaste for management is often that too much of the
administrative work is
either too routine, or
not challenging enough
to peak their interest.
You know that the
worst thing that can
happen to you in
medical practice
is to
have two jobs at the
same time.

In one you
are your own employee
working for that
invisible corporation
you
set up to run the
practice business.
The other is being the
owner and CEO of the
business which
requires management of
the business done by
the only person
responsible for the
success of the
business... you!

Pushing the
management job on to
an untrained employee
who thinks she or he
can handle the job
is
downright stupidity.
As the old saying
goes, "Ignorance can
be overcome by
education, but
stupidity lasts
forever."

Hiring a
person trained in
management,
dramatically improves
the office
business
functioning, but does
not remove your
overall responsibility
for supervising the
manager and
maintaining your
control of every
aspect of your medical
practice business.
Managers earn higher
salaries so you must
earn more to pay them,
which
is often a
problem for physicians
nowadays.

Another trait
doctors have that
makes it difficult to
manage their office is
difficulty in
delegating duties.
Most doctors want
things done a certain
way. They often are
not satisfied with how
someone else does a
job and would much
rather do it
themselves and have it
done "right."

A
mistake made by the
majority of doctors who do delegate duties
to their staff is
that
of not taking the time
to explain to the
employee exactly what
he wants done
in
detail. If it's done
without a detailed
explanation, you will
get back what the
person thinks you may have meant.

Delegation of
duties, including
outsourcing, is a
critical issue for
business growth.
Physicians must learn
to be satisfied with,
"good enough" work
done by others. No
one can do it all
themselves.

The distasteful
idea of replacing
yourself, your
importance, your
supreme talents, makes
a huge dent in the ego
and self esteem, which
is another barrier to
good management for
doctors.

We all develop
habit patterns in our
lives to make our life
experiences easier and
quicker. It's been
reported that 80% of
our daily activities
are composed of habit
patterns. For
doctors, it's just
another problem in
their adjustment to a
managerial status,
where most everything
in management is
constantly changing,
new problems, new
innovations, new
procedures, new
employees, new
systems, new toys,
etc.

If there is one
essential factor to
keep in mind while
thinking through all
of this stuff, it's
one that's known to
all success business
people, business
experts, management
experts, and maybe
even your
wife or
husband.

You need to make
your productive time
even more important
than it is now. You
must free up the
time
to do the $100/hr. job
instead of doing the
$10/hr. job. It's
very easy to find an
employee to work for
$10/hour but you
rarely can find an
employee capable of
doing what the
$100/hour requires.

That is what you must
do yourself, no one
else can do it. In
most medical
practices
that job is marketing your medical
practice and establishing a
constant
flow of new
patients into your
practice.

(How to
weasel out the time to
do the management
process for your
practice business will
be one of my articles soon to come.)